I'm not rejoining the board, but I saw on Facebook that Ralph has passed away and I wanted to share my feelings here. I knew he was in the hospital a lot in recent months, but didn't realize he was at death's door. This is such horrible news. He was such a great guy. I had gotten together with him f...

The point is that you and others are clearly trying to find some way to justify using this massacre by an obviously unbalanced person as a way to discredit, delegitimize, attack, marginalize and/or shut up the "right". It stinks. It doesn't just stink. It's flat out dishonorable. I've been off of h...

No, I think that if the right can disclaim that their politically motivated noise is part of the problem then so can the left, and in both cases for the same reason, namely freedom of speech. How outrageous either side is being is from that point of view beside the point. Shoe on other foot, no? No...

Please read this and consider whether there are some people out there in our great country who need to retract their irresponsible statements blaming the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, etc. There seems to me like there are way too many people out there with a political ax to grind who are trying to score ...

JANUARY 10, 2011 The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder. By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS Shortly after November's elec...

Sometimes A Tragedy Is Just A Tragedy The media try--and fail--to make sense of the Tucson massacre. 12:00 AM, Jan 10, 2011 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES Even before anything at all was known about Jared Lee Loughner, who went on a deadly shooting spree outside a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, a n...

At the time of the attemted assassination of Ronald Reagan, I was not of an age to be following the newspapers very closely. At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo? It was known almost immedi...

>What degree of specifics do you expect from me?< Just an answer to the question about what the mother should do with her young child while she's working the menial job at MacDonald's. If you've answered that already I'm afraid I've missed it? Regards, Len From a couple posts ago (by me): "And when...

>At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?< My memory could be gone but I don't remember any alluding to political blame gaming--he was just a weirdo. What did come up if my memory is correct i...

Should We Blame Sarah Palin for Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting? by Howard Kurtz Info Howard Kurtz Already, people are pointing fingers at Sarah Palin and her "target map" for fostering the tragedy in Arizona—but Howard Kurtz says military terminology has been part of politics for ages. I hate to say t...

Let's get this straight. 1) Cosima said the gunman was someone who hates the government. 2) The Tea Party constantly talks about the evil of government. Right here on this board we have someone who can't tell the difference between the government of the United States and the Soviet Union and is con...

I also used it when a member spouted off about Jews controlling the media, and I don't regret that either. I remember John Bleau, the poster who, in addition to misunderstanding the usage of the suffix "eau" in French, started posting mainly to espouse an AIDS conspiracy theory, you know, the one w...

I'm just not moved. I accept that I should have called him a bigot instead of an idiot, but the charge of racist and bigot is thrown around so loosely by so many on the left in this country (including on this board at times), that those of us on the other side of the aisle have a right to point it o...

You're an idiot. Barry, I don't think that Tea Partiers are "just like" this shooter, but we've gone to considerable lengths to bring the site to the point where "idiot" doesn't have to be censored. Let's not backtrack. Hmm, pretty please? His statement was rank bigotry, and I think he needed to be...

You're an idiot. Barry, I don't think that Tea Partiers are "just like" this shooter, but we've gone to considerable lengths to bring the site to the point where "idiot" doesn't have to be censored. Let's not backtrack. Hmm, pretty please? His statement was rank bigotry, and I think he needed to be...

If you check out this website (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/jared-lee-loughner-gabriel-giffords-suspected-shooter-identified/story?id=12572164) and other news stories, the shooter was known to be a disturbed young man --- a real weirdo who hated the government just like the Tea Partiers. You're an...

>they have to settle for any kind of job they can get. < Well we may not be that far apart then. We had included in the discussion menial jobs. Let's take a mother with one young child, a 1 year old--let's say she could get a job at a McDonalds--what if she has no one to take care of the one year o...

We seem to be going around in circles Yes. We are. I'll just add that in your example of someone spending the three years returning to school or getting job training, and can't find anything in the field they trained for, I'd be okay with an extension (maybe another year), but at some point, they h...

>I think you're being unreasonable in demanding an answer for a question for which there isn't one that will both work and satisfy you.< Forget me, my satisfaction and my sensibilities :) --what's wrong with asking for a sensible fair practical plan? Regards, Len It's often the case in matters of i...

Barry maybe it's you who are shifting responsibility--you seem to now say nothing can be done? I don't accept that answer. Some policy has to be in place. Cutting people off at some point IS a policy because it motivates where nothing else will in many cases. Forcing people to get job training or f...

Again I am open to a discussion of workfare but can someone suggest a sensible practical fair plan to deal with this. Regards, Len I think you're being unreasonable in demanding an answer for a question for which there isn't one that will both work and satisfy you. While I never even considered pro...

"The TANF program does not offer benefits sufficient to lift recipients out of poverty, and despite a strong economy, the majority of families who have moved off the TANF rolls have remained in poverty. Considerations of another traditional economic goal, reduction of inequality, only makes matters...

>but at some point, you just have to say, "too bad."< Why--let's set a standard for monitoring their efforts--as long as they're trying I don't think you should cut off their benefits. And to the slackers what should we do for their children if anything? Regards, Len Jack and I have answered the "w...

>I'm sorry if it's cruel to your sensibilities to tell someone you're going to get to live off of tax dollars for the next three years, then you need to get a job or you're on your own, but if you don't do that, too many people will have a sense of entitlement to life-long government support; and t...

>the only way to really change the situation in many of the worst urban areas is to emphasize the importance of marriage, parental responsibility, and family and the value of work < But how specifically do you do it--in the meantime these high cost solutions are needed--welfare, food stamps, medica...

>NYPD crime statistics don't map precisely onto the graph, as they are not calculated per capita of the city's population, but they essentially confirm it. From 1991 to 1995, crimes declined by ca. 215,000 (40%); from 1995 to 2001, by ca. 150,000 (another 48%); and since 2001, by ca. 56,000 (anothe...

"perhaps" our involvement in Vietnam did, in fact, stop the spread of Communism to a number of countries in that part of the world I don't get it. Why should our failure to stop a communist takeover in Vietnam, despite long and heroic effort and immense losses, have prevented communist takeovers el...

While I view Hitchens' zeal for going after religion and the religious as misguided, I have a lot of respect for both his intellect and the way he re-examined his philosophy on many issues, especially in the area of foreign/defense policy, as he grew older. He'll be missed if the reports I've read a...

We should start keeping a running list of posted opinion pieces whose title bears no relationship to their content. Funny. I thought the title was very appropriate (I took it from the title of the piece). That's been true in every case where this happens. I am not saying that our posters should be ...

We should start keeping a running list of posted opinion pieces whose title bears no relationship to their content. Funny. I thought the title was very appropriate (I took it from the title of the piece). Perhaps you are just so allergic to the traditional values that made us a great civilization i...

City Journal Heather Mac Donald Restoring the Social Order Twenty momentous years of conservative policy success in cities 6 January 2011 Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency...

From reading this piece, one would think that anti-war conservatives have an unbroken record of being right. Yet the writer ignores the 1930s and early 40s, when anti-war conservatives were called isolationists, and they opposed doing anything to stop the Nazis from overrunning Europe. When you pla...

As the definition Steve posted points out, it's not accurate to say that pacifism and being anti-war are synonymous, but in this country, a lot of knee-jerk anti-war people (usually on the left) are certainly pacifists when it comes to the use of military force. Anti-war conservatives are probably l...

From reading this piece, one would think that anti-war conservatives have an unbroken record of being right. Yet the writer ignores the 1930s and early 40s, when anti-war conservatives were called isolationists, and they opposed doing anything to stop the Nazis from overrunning Europe. When you play...

By and large the casualties of the two current Asian wars are from the same socioeconomic stratum as those of Vietnam, and contrary to what is implied in that article, very many communities have felt losses that have hit close to home. Surely the difference is one of numbers. Though it implies an u...

The disconnect between the military and most of the civillian population is an important topic. Thanks for raising it. Here is a portion of a longer piece by Robert Kaplan that touches on the same topic: Never-say-die faith, accompanied by old-fashioned nationalism, is alive in America. It is a matc...

“Reagan nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it. As the biographer Lou Cannon noted, it was unfair for critics to say that Reagan was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, since ‘he never seriously attempted to balance the b...

The major provisions of the health care bill will come into play one at a time over the next several years. If Obama is re-elected, irrespective of what happens in Congress, flat-out repeal will not happen before every provision has kicked in. At that point, the Republicans will have as much luck a...

It’s like they’re making revenge their first order of legislative business, instead of progress. Wouldn't the accuracy of Grier's statement depend on your definition of "progress?" And is it actually "revenge" to attempt to repeal a law that all polling indicates a solid majority of the country opp...

I haven't heard the Mehta, although this isn't the first time I've read a rave about it. Of those I have heard, Bernstein's first New York recording on Sony remains my favorite. The one that so many people seem to like, but which has never done anything for me is the Klemperer (I also used to have h...

.... The thing that strikes me most about von Karajan is how "stringy" he makes the music sound .... That is the best description so far of why I ultimately turned away from HvK. One either likes that sound on a continued basis or one does not. I started looking for a more varied orchestral sound a...

so what if some of the musicians are unhappy with the conductor's technique. the listeners aren't directly concerned with conductor/musician communication - only as it affects the result - they might be unhappy with the musical result, which of course, is the product of the conductor's rapport with...

... what matters to most of us is the artistic result, not the techniques by which it has been achieved. That's what it all boils down to IMO. Also, it should be perfectly clear that what matters most about a conductor to orchestra musicians will likely be different than what matters most to the li...

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/dec01/Beethoven57_Toscanini_Naxos.jpg This Naxos CD is one of my favourite CMG recommendations of 2010. The Seventh was recorded in 1936 and has been beautifully restored, it's a must for all lovers of Beethoven's Seventh. Does it differ significa...

I agree with the decision to postpone the game, and disagree with Rendell on this issue. However, I wish the Eagles had shown up at last night's game. :( Really. The offense picked a bad time to have their worst game since early in the season. It's going to be tough to get to the Super Bowl now tha...